The pizza business has grown to become a major segment of the retail food market with sales of $6 billion. It is estimated that 95 percent of Americans eat pizza. There are over 58,000 pizza parlors in the United States. While Pizza is eaten in restaurants, its biggest sales are in the take-out market. Millions of pizza take-out and delivery boxes are consumed every day. The basic pizza box is just that-a square or rectangular box. Some companies use round boxes and some use insulated boxes. The basic pizza box, however, is made out of fiberboard.
Today's pizzas are made with a lot of cheese. This cheese frequently forms a large mass in the center of the pizza. Since many pizzas are almost never cut clean through, this mass of cheese causes the slices to stick together. When trying to remove a slice of pizza from a box that has slices stuck together, removing a slice can be difficult. Pulling the slice of pizza from the box causes this cheese to stretch, leaving the mass of cheese in the box. Because this cheese is often hot, it may be dangerous for small children who may be burned trying to remove this cheese. Adults also have problems with this cheese, often pulling cheese off the slice of pizza.
Several types of pizza box improvements have been patented. Mostly, these improvements fall into two groups. First is the type that attempts to eliminate the sticking cheese problem by providing a segmented box. The second group does not address this problem in particular. Rather these patents describe segmented plates that can be formed in the box and used to eat the pizza.
An example of the first group is U.S. Pat. No. 3,771,713 to Davidson. This patent forms a tray for pie shaped objects. It has a number of segments that the cut pieces can be placed. Although use of a tray as taught by Davidson solves the problem of the coagulation of cheese, it has another problem in itself. It simply takes too much time for the pizzeria to individually place separate pizza slices in such a box.
Examples of the second group are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,335,846 to Mills, 5,014,853 to Crockett, and 5,110,038 to Pantisano et al. Mills teaches an insulated pizza box that is circular. The top is segmented into a number of pie shaped sections that come together in the center with a center vent hole. These sections can be broken out to form individual holders for the pizza. Note that because of the curved tip of these plates, and the thickness of the insulation, they cannot easily be used to lift the slices of pizza from the box.
Crockett teaches a pizza box that has a perforated top. In this design, the box top can be separated into four square plates. Each plate has a thumb hole in the box edge that can be used to lift the plate. Pantisano teaches a box with a perforated lid and a perforated bottom. Both the lid and the bottom can be broken out to form plates. The bottom provides square plates and the top is cut for round plates. All of these designs suffer from the same problem: none can be used to lift a slice of pizza from a box in such a manner as to quickly cut the coagulated cheese in the center of the pizza to enable a single slice to be removed without pulling half the cheese from the pizza.